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(Note: The following is an expanded excerpt of a paper I wrote for a Magic and Witchcraft class. For Part I to the article, click here.)

In April of 1692, with witch trial testimonies in full swing, Thomas Putnam claimed his daughter Ann was visited by the spectral figure of Reverend George Burroughs who proceeded to torture the young girl. A month later, Ann Putnam testified that two apparitions appeared to her. According to Ann they were the wives of Burroughs, allegedly killed by the minister’s own hand. The constant whisper of his mistreated spouses followed Burroughs from his earliest days in Salem Village through his forcible return as witch cabal leader. His second wife, widow Sarah Ruck Hathorne whom he married in 1682, was the sister-in-law of Essex County Magistrate John Hathorne, a man who became deeply involved in the later witchcraft accusations against Burroughs. Sarah Hathorne Burroughs died in Falmouth, Maine in 1689.

Mercy Lewis, a young woman with personal history with Burroughs, then charged the minister with also appearing as a specter to her in May. Burroughs allegedly went to Lewis to get her to sign a pact with the Devil as well as try to recruit other area girls into his diabolic scheme.

It seems clear that even if the barest of historical accounts of Minister Burroughs are accurate, he cut an unusual, potentially fiery and eccentric frontier character. Known for unusual strength, like lifting a long musket with a single hand or hoisting a filled barrel with just his fingers, Burroughs may have also been in conflict with the Puritan fathers over faith.

Accusations of witchcraft further enflamed the war scars of southern New England. Ann Putnam Jr. reportedly told investigators that Burroughs had bewitched the soldiers of Governor Edmund Andros in 1688-1689. Several figures key to the Salem witch hysteria, like Magistrates John Hathorne and Johnathan Corwin whose fact finding efforts in Maine may have led to the decision to leave Falmouth virtually defenseless during 1690s mass Abanaki assault, made a variety of mistakes during King William’s War. It seems that war-time shortcomings may have been projected onto Burroughs during the trial. Hathorne and Corwin were the lead inquisitors in Salem and pressed a confession from young Abigail Hobbs who claimed she had been approached by the Devil in the woods outside Falmouth, Maine four years earlier. Hobbs was yet another Casco Bay refugee driven to the Village. The solicitation in the woods was not happenstance as the woods were widely regarded as an evil place.

Was the psychological hysteria of Salem’s young women a manifestation of the stress of war, communal squabbles and frontier life? Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is a widely accepted psychological diagnosis that could be applied to the accusers. However, the individual nature of PTSD does not properly grapple with the group dynamic that gave credence to the wild accusations. Epidemic hysteria, a physical or psychological manic state manifested by a group, seems to fit the Salem case perfectly. Provoked by stress and nurtured by community values or worries, epidemic hysteria has several recorded instances in Europe, from a Black Death induced mass dance hysteria in German to the French “Barkers” who crawled around like dogs, social stress can spread like a thought virus through a community. Could the young women of Salem, reeling from war and reflecting the spiritual worries of their communities; and personal prejudices of their parents have turned to Burroughs as scapegoat? Was Mercy Lewis, who was familiar with Burroughs unconventional ministerial style as well as intimate to his household, the well from which the prejudice sprung from? Could Mercy Lewis, scarred by war and fallen from a position of affluence, also been witness to or possibly victim of Burroughs reputed ill temper during her brief time as maidservant?

Inarguably an unconventional clergyman Burroughs easily becomes the apostate minster of Satan in New England when portrayed by the vivid imaginations of young women, isolated and near a zone of conflict. Death loomed with each raid, Satan rallied his forces in the treeline and frontiersmen needed a strong spiritual figure to guide them in a time of war. Burroughs was effortlessly painted as a failed, questionable religious leader, with a rebellious desire to live apart from the civility and strict leadership of Massachusetts Bay. When viewed through the critical lens of Salem Village religious leaders, Burroughs became not only an enemy of the village, but the colony and the Puritan faith. The men of Massachusetts had gone to war in Maine and returned with losses, physical and financial. Stung by these defeats, it seems their judgment may have been clouded when presented with a figure as odd and spiritually unconventional as Burroughs. The wayward Burroughs was a casualty at the confluence of personal circumstances, religious prejudices and group psychological trauma that led to his execution as leader of the mythic witches of Salem Village.

(Note: What follows is an expanded excerpt of a paper I wrote for a Magic and Witchcraft class.)

There have been scholarly or psychological explanations of the witch trials and hysteria in Salem and around New England. From petty neighbor disputes to hallucinogenic bread mold poisoning, there were seemingly as many explanations for the craze as there were witch-related indictments in New England during the 17th century. Some 234 indictments were handed down by New England authorities, including 36 executions, during the craze period.

One overlooked idea that has grown in acceptance is the idea of war-time psychological trauma, specifically to certain players in the Salem Witch hysteria. Not confined to the battlefield, but any dramatic tragic event, Post-traumatic Stress Disorder’s attributes include,”flashbacks, nightmares and severe anxiety, as well as uncontrollable thoughts about the event,” according the Mayo Clinic. If we look closely at a pair in the Salem story we find a connection to the horrors of war and its possible influence on the Salem witch hysteria.

George Burroughs, Harvard graduate and unconventional preacher, arrived in Falmouth, Maine to lead a small congregation that included the prominent land-owning family of Phillip Lewis in 1674. Two years of instructions and Bible readings to the populations of friends and neighbors came to an end when war arrived in Falmouth. A splinter of King Phillip’s War racking southern New England pierced Casco Bay as Wabanaki raiding parties killed and put to the torch everything in their path including the homes of Burroughs congregation. The pastor and other Falmouth survivors sought refuge on a Casco Bay island. Burroughs, seeking security and stability in the wake of the decimation, traveled to Salem Village to become its pastor.

Burroughs time in Salem would be short lived as lack of pay and a disputed loan from the prominent Putnam family of Salem led the minister to return to a rebuilt Falmouth, Maine after three years. He would return to Maine, set a new phase in life and await new war.

Maine landowner Phillip Lewis welcomed daughter, Mercy, to the world in 1673. Raised in Falmouth, Maine up to the raids of King Phillip’s War, Mercy Lewis fled to Salem Town until 1683. Like Burroughs, Lewis returned to the reformed Falmouth, leading a typical frontier life just a short distance from the returned unordained minister until war broke out a second time in her young life.

Abanaki raiders and their New French allies swept into Maine in a series of raids in September of 1689 during King William’s War. Reaching back into Falmouth, now fortified and prepared for attacks, the Abanaki battled militia for six hours but were ultimately rebuffed. Once affluent, the family of Phillip Lewis was decimated by the wars of 1689 and 1690. Orphaned during the Falmouth incursions of the period, Mercy Lewis would find shelter in the home of George Burroughs for several months. Mercy remained with the pastor until she moved first to Beverly and then to Salem Village in employment of Thomas Putnam. Thomas Putnam, member of the family whom Burroughs financially battled, was father of nine children including his oldest, Anne Putnam Jr.

It was late January, 1692 when the girls of Salem Village began their convulsions of bewitchment and it was soon that Mercy Lewis, then 19, and 12-year old Ann Putnam Jr. joined the accusatory chorus.

In the conclusion of this post we’ll look at the accusations and how the confluence of war and witchery led to death.

Starting this month and through early 2015 the British Museum will exhibit the portrayal of witches and their craft in artwork. The show will feature artists ranging from Durer to Goya and their interpretations of witches that haunted the night and cavorted with the Devil.

The exhibit piques my interest for several reasons as it returns my thinking to the idea of the advance of the printing press and the growth of belief in witchcraft. With the creation of the movable type, books became more widespread and could immediately influence populations. While the ability to read and write, literacy, varied from nation to nation there were always literati that could help disseminate new ideas. These new books also provided the first opportunity for widespread artist portrayals of the unholy acts ‘witches’ were accused of.

The infamous misogynist witchcraft treatise Malleus Maleficarum saw its first printing in 1486. By 1520 the work by Kramer and Sprenger was reprinted 14 times. Until the late 15th century ecclesiastic prosecutors had little central guidance on how to deal with witches until printing ideas and procedures more readily. The Malleus became the most well known guidebook of witch prosecution. The consolidation of European witchcraft views also came as works like chapbooks and pamphlets filled with sensational tales became more widely consumed. One such example was the case of the Chelmsford Witches, their trial and its sensational content, was printed for a wider audience than that which lived within ear shot. In the case of Matthew Hopkins, England’s self-proclaimed Witchfinder General, produced The Discovery of Witches in 1647 and his colleague, John Stearne contributed his tales of witch-hunting in 1648’s A Confirmation and Study of Witchcraft. The ideas spread in salacious and sensational ways were given credence by clever addition of “facts” such as in the case of the Malleus which tacked a Papal Bull on it’s introduction as pseudo-sanctioning.

In a span of five centuries ‘witches’ were either women deluded into thinking they were flying in the night, according to the Canon Episcopi, or simple practitioners of low magic; to devil cavorting heretics. It is this shift from harmless low, village magicians or healers to heretics that thrust witches into the forefront of public imagination. With the creation of the printing press, the stories, images and rules engraved the heretical activities as fact and punishable by torture or death. While it would be simplistic to claim the spread of printed materials caused the witch craze, what it did do was make “evidence” readily available and illustrated by images that thrilled and terrified.

Modern popular perception of witchcraft is almost entirely informed through popular culture, from The Crucible and Bewitched, to Charmed or WGN America’s Salem. To ferret fact from fiction, to understand the roots of America’s witchcraft hysteria, takes up volumes and is continually being reinterpreted by authors and academics. Yet if we look back at the debate on the validity of witchecraft we find some dramatically differing opinions: from pragmatic or dismissive, to the violently merciless.

Burchard, Bishop of Worms, handled beliefs that witches were all around acting with malice as lingering superstitions remedied by penance detailed in his widely distributed 10th century work, The Corrector. In it Burchard hypothetically questions the faithful by asking if they had consulted a magician or recited incantations over medicinal herbs. The remedies to these sins and other sins were variations on penance and fasting over a few days or up to seven years; a stark contrast to later beliefs that witchcraft was Satan’s direct manipulation of humanity and needed to be dealt with swiftly and without mercy.

Interestingly, Burchard delivers a penance for those who accept witches, “Do you believe that there are women who, like the one people call Holda, ride by night on special animals in the company of devils which have been changed into women, as some people— deceived by the Devil— believe? If you do so believe, you should do penance on the appointed days for a whole year.”

An early image of the witch in air speeding to a conjugal visit with Satan was dismissed as misguided spiritual activity according to the 10th century’s Canon Episcopi. When describing the strange image, compiler Regino of Prum wonders, “Who is so stupid and foolish as to think that all these things which are only done in spirit happen in the body.”

The roots of the witches sabbat has its roots in the pagan past of Europe, in particular the idea of the Wild Hunt. In the Wild Hunt, Odin led an army of supernatural hunters or magical beings through the night sky in a tempest of action. Segue to post-conversion; the Wild Hunt becomes a demonic onslaught and a perfect model for a witch’s nightly ride to commune with Satan.

Some 500 years after Canon Episcopi the image of the sabbat as a Satanic orgy is real to Pierre de Lancre who, after putting 80 women to the torch, assembles a 200 page description of the sabbat. DeLancre believes women take flight nocturnally, assemble in numbers as large as 12,000, to meet the devil who they would greet with a osculum infame, before detailing their malefice, feast on babies before dancing naked and copulate with the three-horned goat that was Satan.

In 1486’s Malleus Maleficarum, Dominican inquisitors Heinrich Kramer and Jacob Spranger declare not believing in witches alone is heretical, “Whether the belief that there are such beings as witches is so essential a part of the Catholic faith that obstinately to maintain the opposite opinion manifestly savours of heresy.”

The deeply misogynistic work from Kramer and Spranger (which I will cover in a future post) essentially created a threat where there was none. Kramer and Spranger positioned themselves as unsurpassed witch prosecutors after leading 50 witchcraft executions in Germany. As they met a variety of resistence from communities and political leadership, the two men received a Papal bull from Innocent VIII. Calculating, Kramer and Sprenger attached the Bull to the front of Malleus Maleficarum, effectively sanctioning their writings and remedies for ridding Europe of Satan’s servants, witches.

Portions of the following post come from a paper I wrote two years ago for a Witchcraft and Charm Magic class.